So I finally ding 70...

[apocrypha]

Yeah, slow, I know. I've always had a love/hate relationship with WoW but finally succumbed and bought TBC about 2 months ago after watching my girlfriend play for a while.

I 2-box mmorpgs, have done since DaoC (buffbots got me started) so I've dinged an enhancement shaman and a holy paladin at the same time. All well and good, spent a few days basking in the glory of no more XP'ing. That wore off fast when I realised there's no fun way to progress any more.

I've read the various "How I get teh gears!" threads here and other places, but I'm kinda stymied. I'm not in a large guild - it's me, my GF, a couple of friends. I'm the only one with any level 70's. Nobody on my server does non-heroic instances any more, outside of guilds. I've bought most of the blue pvp set for my two characters but canot get groups for the Caverns of Time since nobody does that non-heroic. Been trying for 2 days, not a single group :/

PvP is kinda painful. OK, no kinda about it, it's horrible. I get 3-shotted by most other players, no joke. They seem effectively immune to me. I'm more useful playing the paladin because at least he can heal teammates semi-usefully, but as soon as he's spotted he lasts seconds. The icing on the cake is that I regularly get abusive whispers from other players on my own side because my gear is crap. Like... wtf? I'm there in the BG's trying to get better gear and they're actually stopping playing to take the time to send me abusive messages?! Because I don't have epics! Is this normal or is my battlegroup full of sociopaths?

So... is there ANY point to WoW as a new level 70? Or should I just forget it for now and wait for WotLK? Sorry if this has come across as a rant at all, but after looking forward to being 70 the shock of just how crap it is has been a bit of a.. well.. a shock... :p

[Sparky]

You could always run around AV being useless for some welfare epics 

/w back you're at the end of your tether and going AFK

[stray]

To be frank, I don't anything about endgame wow pvp, but from what I gather, you should respect that shaman to elemental! At least if you're going to die quickly anyways. Seems like those guys are still capable of taking people down with them. 

[Merusk]

It's only crap if you're alone.  Unfortunatly, it sounds like you're alone.  You could try and drag your guildimates up with you, or if they're in their 60s, run the 'lower' instances with them.  They all give rep to at least Honored, so with enough runs you can do heroics.

Other than that, yeah, you dinged so late that everyone who did it earlier has moved on to other content - for the most part.  You'll still find 2nd and 3rd (or 4th+) characters running the instances, but that's unusual these days.   

The whispers about your 'crap gear' is because they've been doing this for a year+.  Even secondary characters are geared out in S1 gerar bought from honor rather than the Blue gear bought from rep vendors.   The blue rep gear is OK, but it still puts you at "cannon fodder" level when up against guys in S3 working in pairs or trios.   You're also probably Alliance.  On most servers Alliance IS full of sociopaths who couldn't learn to work together if their lives depended on it.  I've stopped PvPing altogether on my Alliance characters because of it.

[Tale]

So... is there ANY point to WoW as a new level 70? Or should I just forget it for now and wait for WotLK?

I asked myself that question when I hit 70 soon after Burning Crusade's release, and decided to forget it for now and wait for WotLK. Haven't played WoW since.

[photek]

Sounds painful, but don't give up just yet. Many things you can do with both your classes to get gear quickly, PvP path being the easiest. First off, specc your shaman elemental. You will be far more effective as elemental shaman with greens / blues than enhancement. Ehnancement only works if you have extreme gear and skill (long experience as PvPer) and from there it is all about who is close to you. Elemental shamans even through talents and just greens / blues can dish out some nice damage and you can effectively kill someone. Stay a lot in the back, pick good geared players from beginning of BG and follow them like a leech. Work as off healer with him if its dps'ers.

Pala, holy is a good choice. Here you must also stick to very stong players, pick a warrior, mage or lock and glue yourself to them and keep em alive. Basically since you got not so good gear and it shows, you will get targeted a lot, so having classes who can help you in sticky situations are great. I know it might sound boring, but PvP is rather fun and doing BG's with your guilds, daily quests and getting lots of honor and saving it for Season 4, you can buy Season 2 gear with the honor points and already there you got a great start.

Another thing to do with your gear is making a 5on5 arena team and playing 10 games a week. Of course you will lose most, but thats not the point. You will get arena points to get some nice gear from there too. If you solo with the classes, restoration and holy are natural choices and just healbotting BG's for easy honor, I enjoy PVP healing and you might too.

Now if you want to go the instance way, heroics with friends is your best choice. Find one of each class who becomes your "playmate" and group with them daily to raid. Its fun and socializing too.

In the end it all depends on your goal, if you wanna melt faces in PvP or you wanna top green meters in PvE, so pick a style that suits you. In the end, as shallow and random it might sound, do what's fun to you.

[Gobbeldygook]

Non-heroics are very difficult to get groups for.  It's pretty much impossible unless you aggressively recruit.  You're never going to get a group just sitting in LFG.  You want to move onto heroics ASAP which are MUCH easier to get groups for.  You can get some solid pieces from the ogri'la, skyguard, and SSO rep vendors, then use that gold to buy some of the best crafted pieces you can.  When you first start doing heroics, stick to the easy ones (Cenarion Expedition ones, mechanar, and...kind've ramparts).

[Ragnoros]

So... is there ANY point to WoW as a new level 70? Or should I just forget it for now and wait for WotLK? Sorry if this has come across as a rant at all, but after looking forward to being 70 the shock of just how crap it is has been a bit of a.. well.. a shock... :p

I was in the same position you are now, I did the honor grind and got geared. But once I actually had the gear to stand a chance I was totally burnt out.

If you had a guild or group of RL friends to play with it might be halfway fun. But as it is I would recommend you wait on WotLK.

[Oban]

Turn off battleground chat, it makes AV so much more fun.  If you are getting abusive whispers constantly, turn off whispers too.

[WindupAtheist]

I was you.  I made the "how I get teh gearz" thread.  My advice:  Reroll.

[apocrypha]

Ahh thanks for the advice folks, it's much appreciated. Especially Photek, gives me some direction at least!

I am actually Horde Merusk, but these days I think a lot of the old distinctions between the sides has eroded, I've played Alliance to 60 (pre-TBC) with 2 chars and now Horde to 70 with 2 and honestly, there's the same proportion of jerks, idiots and children on each side. Luckily there's also the same proportion of adults, nice people, fun people and generally good people on both sides too :P

Gonna go respec elemental now and get the elemental shammy set (excluding the Keepers of Time bit ofc), turn whispers off, look for some huge tauren with bagpipes on his shoulders and weapons so glowy I'll need sunglasses and follow them around :p

[Tannhauser]

Or you could quit WoW and play LOTRO where gear isn't as important an issue!   

/skulks off back to Mordor

[Ratman_tf]

I was you.  I made the "how I get teh gearz" thread.  My advice:  Reroll.

Reroll a lvl 19 BG twink and use your main to "patron" with gold, BOE blues from the AH and item enhancements.

I did that once with a 19 hunter, and it made a world of difference in PvP.

Gear really is king in WoW. No bout a doubt it.

[Kail]

Semi-random rambling ahead:

Generally, when I hit 70, I PvP, because that's something you can do solo.  AV almost exclusively, because one sucky player has less of an impact there than in, say, Warsong.  And the S1 PvP gear, while not cutting edge, makes a massive difference in your survivability.

By a weird coincidence, I have almost the exact opposite specs as you, looks like: a resto shaman and a retribution paladin.  The shaman is very useful in AV; chain heal is insanely nice, and as long as you stick with the zerg, you can really rack up the healing points.  The paladin I'm less happy with... as a holy spec, he seems to be a less effective healer than the shaman (while having more pain in the ass buffs to spam all over the place), and as a protection spec, PvP is a sad joke.  I was feeling a bit reluctant to respec to lolret, but the other two seem fairly useless in BGs (not that he's extremely powerful as a ret, either, but hell, I don't know, maybe I'm doing something wrong).

I've never gotten any whispers about how bad my gear is; it seems odd to me that people are telling you that.  I still see 70s running around in Jade Warrior Pauldrons a lot.  I've never gotten any whispers about how bad my equipment is, on any of my characters... and trust me, it's really bad.

Ultimately, I decided to reroll as a more PvP friendly class, since that's pretty much all I do.  If your friends ever get to 70, they're probably going to have the same kind of problem as you, and if you've got a geared out DPS character, it'll probably help them more than having a really awesome healer.

I'm also having a fair amount of fun with the new dailies; you might want to look at those for a while.  The rep gains are nice (your characters could both conceivably use the purple Shattered Sun shield), the money is nice (and there are occasionally some nice PvP items on the AH if you've got the cash).

Edit: Shattered Hand => Shattered Sun, oops

[Gobbeldygook]

I was feeling a bit reluctant to respec to lolret, but the other two seem fairly useless in BGs (not that he's extremely powerful as a ret, either, but hell, I don't know, maybe I'm doing something wrong).

The problem with Holy is that you are at the mercy of your often-incompetent team mates to actually win matches.  Ret's fine in BGs because there's so much going on that people generally don't stop to CC or kite you.  Try to find a place where people MUST deal with you to accomplish anything, like sitting in a tower in AV.

Also, Radli, you bought the wrong weapon for your warrior.  That's a hunter weapon.  Page a GM and ask them to swap it for the S1 mace.

[rk47]

i'm kinda amazed u managed to hit 70 on an enhancement shaman. I played one myself till 60 then I realized i'm not scaling well to the mobs in outlands. I bleed a crapload against same level and barely live against mobs 2-3 levels above me. Don't even talk about accidental 2-pulls.

Think I went pure spell crit elemental right after that and never regretted it, since every crit is a free bolt last time till they patched it. Pre-patched, I could just grind / farm non stop for primals and signets. I worked on my epic leatherworking too, killing hordes of clefthoofs for skill-ups.

[apocrypha]

rk47 - I two box. Imagine your enhance shammy with a +800 healing full holy paladin following him everywhere spamming flash of light and with blessings and buffs and even bubbles if needed. PvE really is a doddle with that setup.

Sure, the XP rate from mob kills is halved but whilst levelling it was *very* rare that I got a quest that I couldn't do without any other help at all and with zero downtime (thankyou water shield & mana spring totem) these two were a serious mob-killing machine. If I did mess up then I nearly always managed to get one of them safely away (what, my healer wears plate, has bubbles and can remove all movement impairment effects, nifty!) and since both chars can rez I was back in the fight in under a minute most times.

I think the ease of leveling has contributed to the culture shock of PvP @ 70 a bit. After months of casually killing anything stupid enough to get infront of my axes I suddenly feel like a naked, blind cripple in the BG's 

Anyway, I am currently alternating taking the healadin into the BG's (which is considerably less painful than the shammy, people seem less inclined to bitch about my crappy gear after I've just saved their asses from some psychotic gnome warrior with things from the engine room of the starship Enterprise on his shoulders) and collecting some elemental shaman gear before respeccing him, so at least I have some attainable goals in what is laughingly referred to as WoW's endgame 

[Ingmar]

I still don't know why people call Mech one of the easy heroics. Hell, we one-shot heroic Kael and still epically fail on the damn fire elemental chick in Mech constantly. In my mind it is one of the hardest, not easiest. Botanica, now, Botanica is easy. And 5 badges.

[slog]

The endgame really requires a guild with about 12 to 50 active peeps to be fun.  Anything smaller than that will be blah.

[Dren]

The endgame really requires a guild with about 12 to 50 active peeps to be fun.  Anything smaller than that will be blah.

Agreed.  However, I've said this about really any MMOG.  I rarely last more than 2-3 months in any of them without a decent guild.

Now, some may run with a good Friends list as their "guild" and that is just as good.  I really mean a good number of people you would call "friends" that you enjoy grouping with on a regular basis.

Otherwise, you are playing a MMOG like a single player game.  That's fine for awhile, but the content per hour of experience is so much less compared to a good single player game, you really are not making the most efficient use of your entertainment time.

Multiplayer FPS and Strategy are other alternatives.